Team: Mark Smith (DD), James Key (TD), Akio Haga (Project leader), Simon Philips (HA), Mike Wroe (Head of Electronics), Dan Carpenter (Head of mechanical design), Vijay Mallya (TP), Otmar Szafnauer (CEO) Drivers: Adrian Sutil (14), Tonio Liuzzi (15)
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Very nice car. This evolution will be as good as last years end for them, and also provide a strong building point for them for 2010.
I notice they have gone with a Williams style air intake behind the air box to get air to the gearbox radiator and aid cooling a little as well.
The front wing looks to have built on last years one with even more downforce and thus helping them on the slower tracks as well.
Also have some nicey waisted sidepods, and bardge-boards under the drivers legs and before the sidepods, optomising the DDD more and giving the rear some more downforce.
If they solve the downforce issue of the VJM/02 and get a good ammount of downforce, they will be knocking on the top 10 more and more.
Sutil needs a solid season without some of his more eratic moments, good thing for him is there is no Raikkonen to get tangled up with this year. Liuzzi needs to start flying this year, he got a start at the end of last year with Fisi going to Ferarri, so this will proivide him a solid base. BUT... Bith guys have Di Resta breathing down their necks if they fail to get going good before the end of the season and they want to give Di Resta a go. And from what Martin Whitmarsh said, Di Resta could be getting a go in FP1 at most GP weekends to get arround the testing ban and make sure that he is getting a run in the car. A thing that quite a few medium sized teams could be doing this year, id expect that STR-Ferarri will do this with Hartlet and Ricarro this year.
According to Scarbs blog (and as myurr said), the diffuser is tall and steep and I can't do anything the make it clearer!
"This creates a narrow, but very tall, steep diffuser. Which is a valid alternative way to gain a higher expansion of the airflow, just as making the diffuser longer or wider. In achieving this layout, the lower beam wing is now split in two with its centre missing. The gap spans the exit of the upper deck of the diffuser, a small endplate on the inner tip of the beam wing probably creates a vortex to help draw more flow through the upper deck."
Hard to tell, but i think they lowered the chassis/nose considerably for better CoG/ weight distribution.
I like how they copied Ferrari, outboard mirrors, Brawn front wing....
Wow, those pics are horribly out of proportion. I really dig that f1fantaic do lots of comparisons, but would prefer if they spent a bit more time getting them right..